Michael Moreci brings another winner with Hyperspace Stories #9 “Who’s the Vos?,” but he has a big assist from Nick Brokenshire’s art style, which brings the underground world of Star Wars to life with plenty of Pulp.

The Story

In the Bavana system, a man (Grayson Eckt) who clearly does not belong there is accosted by two bounty hunters. Count Dooku has put a bounty on Eckt’s head for stealing intel. Before the two can do away with Eckt, Quinlan Vos arrives to bring him to the Republic. Vos easily defeats the bounty hunters, but nothing is ever easy in Star Wars, and, sure enough, Cad Bane arrives with his own score to settle.

Vos gets the better of Bane and escapes with Eckt but learns that the Serrenian also stole some of Dooku’s treasure, which he stashed in a junkyard on the planet. Vos goes in alone to retrieve the treasure and intel, but a group of bounty hunters and Bane confront him. Vos distracts them by throwing the treasure on a conveyor belt so he can flee; however, Bane does not take the bait, following Vos to get Eckt first. Once again, Vos defeats Bane and escapes with Eckt in a junkyard ship.

While on the ship, Vos senses a Force Echo and finds the Wookiee doll. We see what Vos sees: Young Viiveenn drops the doll when Kenobi takes her from a battlefield. Wrecker (from the Bad Batch) later finds and keeps the doll.

A Jedi extraction story during the Clone Wars is an excellent way to bring in Vos, who can use his special Force abilities to provide some answers regarding Viiveenn’s doll. But the timeline suggests that Viiveenn lost her doll twice. The Obi-Wan in Vos’s vision is closer to Revenge of the Sith. But she also does not have the toy when Obi-Wan and Anakin encounter Ventress in “The Betrayl,” which appears to occur earlier. After this Volume has ended, it would be beneficial to see the official chronological order of the issues. But it does feel thrown in at the last minute as more of a preview for Issue #10 and less of something that fits the current story.

The Characters

Quinlan Vos working outside the conventional Jedi Order presents a problem for Cad Bane, who often wins his fights against the Jedi. Bane even makes a funny quip during his first scuffle with the Jedi that he prefers Kenobi, which could nod to Bane having better luck against Kenobi. Therefore, it is easy to see why Vos survived Order 66 and joined The Path, as we learn in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Vos is the canon’s first significant character with psychometric (the Force ability to see people or events associated with an object or place by touch). Vos uses it to track down Ziro the Hutt in The Clone Wars episode, “The Hunt of Ziro.” The episode leaned a little too close to a stereotype of Indigenous portrayals in past series and films (Vos presents as an Indigenous character). In recent years, the power has been used by other non-Indigenous characters like Cal Kestis from the Star Wars Jedi gaming franchise.

Here, Vos’s psychometry perfectly fits into showing us how Viiveenn initially lost her doll while hinting at where the next story will lead.

Cad Bane gets his one-liners and does predict some of Vos’s tactics to try and get the upper hand, but Vos is too unpredictable and even knocks Bane’s hat off his head. But there has never been much depth to Bane, who is often used to look cool and remind people that space westerns are cool, too. 

Grayson Eckt is primarily the catalyst, but he does bring in points made from The Bad Batch, which gets referenced in this story with Wrecker. Although Count Dooku is Serennian, there is no love lost between Dooku and other Serennians like Eckt. Dooku brought war to their planet, and, as seen in The Bad Batch season two, large areas of Serreno were bombed during the Clone Wars. Now, Eckt was probably more motivated financially to betray Dooku, but it does show that Serrenians were not all on the same page. 

This is a lot of backstory, but “Who’s the Vos” stands independently for all readers unfamiliar with The Clone Wars or The Bad Batch to follow.

Canon Contributions

Cad Bane’s words towards Vos suggest this is after that episode of The Clone Wars (referring to Vos as an old friend). It would be interesting if the two had multiple encounters, knowing that Quinlan Vos does survive Order 66 and Cad Bane is also around through the events of The Book of Boba Fett.